Michael Bay Gets Good

Rating: 9/10 (24 July 2005)

If you liked The Rock, both iterations of Bad Boys, Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, you will come for the action, and by God, there's a truckload. If you hated these movies because of their outrageous plot-and-character badness, don't carry a grudge for Michael Bay. He takes an interesting story line (albeit rather full of holes) and shows us the sci-fi/action money. Where actors could have phoned the roles in, everyone has a bit of depth. Not much, but enough to go far beyond a blast-em-up actioner. The action sequences are the centerpiece of the movie (duh), one crackling, gob-smacking destruction of property after the next. MacGregor, Johanssen, Buscemi, and for his short time, Duncan, shine brightly (well...I was a bit too hypnotized by Johanssen's lips to be considered a fair judge of her). And I was pleased to see Shawnee Smith, if only for a few ticks - somebody please hire her for a good role - don't hold 'The Blob' against her, Hollywood, it's been seventeen years already.